Vino Volo (Seattle, WA)

Lauren and I took a flight to San Jose this evening, coming straight from work to the airport. We made it through security with an hour to spare and hungry for some dinner. On our stroll through the main concourse we noticed Vino Volo: a new storefront offering wine tastings and food. Intrigued, we stopped in to check it out.

Turns out that Vino Volo opened two weeks ago to build on its successes in DC’s Dulles National Airport. The Sea-Tac shop surrounds you with bottles of wine on all the walls, and it’s a funny mix of retail shop meets hangout meets light restaurant. We signed ourselves up for the Pinot Noir wine flight, a rosemary chicken sandwich, and Beecher’s ziti & cheese.

The rosemary chicken sandwich was impressively presented with large sprigs of rosemary in place of toothpicks. The pesto aioli and toasted rosemary foccacia were an enjoyable combination. The chicken itself could have used some more attention to detail — the results were a bit too dry for my taste. Overall though, it was darn good for an airport sandwich 🙂

The Beecher’s ziti and cheese was fantastic. Gooey Beecher’s Flagship cheese with flaky breadcrumbs and al dente ziti is a great pre-flight belly filler!

Overall Vino Volo offers a fun (yet still efficient) alternative to standard airport fare. We’ll certainly stop there again the next time we’re in SEA and have some time to kill.

Update (5/19/2009): Ziti and cheese still tasty, but prices are up and portion sizes are down making it a harder sell.